This invention relates to a portable water treatment apparatus and more particularly relates to a trailer mounted system which includes a coarse filter unit and a plurality of hydrocyclone separators that may be moved from place to place in order to clean the water residing in cooling tower basins.
Large quantities of water are used for various cooling purposes in industry. This may be for cooling condensers in power plants, distilleries, oil refineries, or chemical plants; for cooling internal combustion engines in diesel power plants, gas engines in compression or pumping stations, or gasoline engines in automotive or aviation plants; for cooling furnace fronts in steel mills; for cooling tubes in radio broadcasting stations; for cooling compressors in refrigeration or liquid gas manufacturing plants; for cooling chemical and other products; for air conditioning; and for a variety of other cooling processes. The amounts of water required for cooling vary considerably depending on the temperatures of the cooling water and the particular use to which it is put. The source of the cooling water may be ground waters, surface waters, or seawater. Water from wells is greatly favored for once through cooling purposes on account of its even temperature, whereas surface waters are usually subject to large seasonal variations in temperature. At locations where seawater is available, the amounts obtainable are obviously dependent only on the size of the intakes, pipelines, and pumps. It is generally only used once through and then discharged to waste, however.
Cooling systems may become clogged with scale, corrosion deposits, sediment, and organic growths. The principal scale forming material in cooling systems is calcium carbonate formed by the decomposition of calcium bicarbonate into calcium carbonate, carbon dioxide, and water. The most common form of corrosion in ferrous metal vessels is dissolved oxygen corrosion caused by the oxygen content of dissolved air. Turbid waters containing either coarse sediment or fine suspensoids are objectionable in most cooling systems since they are troublesome and form clogging deposits. Iron and manganese bacteria known as "crenothrix" is troublesome in cooling waters as it forms luxuriant masses which slow flow rates and block passages.
The specifications for cooling waters vary widely with different classes of water for various industrial applications so that it can only be said that the water should not form heat insulating scales or other clogging deposits either inorganic or organic and that it should not be widely corrosive under the particular conditions of use or reuse. The general categories on the basis of use are once through and recirculation. As the name implies, in the case of once through, the cooling water is to be used once and then wasted. Therefore, any treatments required are cheap, and such methods are only practical where a more than plentiful supply of water is available. The most common system is one in which the cooling water circulates through the cooling system, is cooled through a cooling tower or spray pool, and is then recycled.
A cooling water is an enclosed device for the evaporative cooling of water by contact with air. This is achieved by an exchange of latent heat resulting from the evaporation of some of the circulating water and partly by a transfer of sensible heat. Such devices can be classified as ponds, atmospheric, chimney tower, and mechanical draught devices. A cooling pond is the most simple and cheapest method of cooling water. It consists of a large pond in which cooling takes place by air contact at the surface; and cold water is drawn from one end of the pond, and the hot water returned to the other. An atmospheric tower is a tower in which the air movement through the tower is dependent only on atmospheric conditions. Winds blow horizontally and the water falls by gravity vertically, and therefore the flow of air is crosswise to the flow of water. A chimney tower is a tower through which air is induced by a large chimney stack above the packing. Mechanical towers, on the other hand, are those towers that utilize fans to move the air through the tower. Such fans can be located in the air intake or the air outlet. In any event, all of the above types of devices include a basin of some sort which is that portion beneath the cooling section that is used for collecting and retaining the cold water produced. Cooling waters may be treated by the cold lime process, sodium calcium exchange, two stage cold lime and sodium calcium exchange, demineralization, the acid process, and chlorination. The removal of turbidity may be accomplished by filtration.
It has been the practice in the past to clarify cooling tower basin waters by means of permanent installations built adjacent the cooling system. For example, it has been common to construct a clarification section adjacent the cooling tower, which section may include large and expensive clarification devices as sand bed filters, pressure type filters, gravity filters, backwash filters, activated carbon filters, zeolite filters, and neutralizing filters. While such permanent installations have met with success in the clarification of cooling tower basin waters, they nevertheless suffer from the disadvantage that their construction is expensive and they are not versatile nor flexible due to the permanent type of installation involved. Thus, the initial capital outlay involved in such systems is enormous, and they cannot be moved easily from place to place in order to serve more than a single installation.
The disadvantages of the prior art are overcome with the present invention and commerically acceptable embodiments of a cleaner for cooling tower basin water and the like are herein provided which are not only fully capable of removing solids and sediments from the water of a cooling tower basin but which are also fully capable of other tasks completely beyond the capabilities of the devices of the prior art. More particularly, however, the embodiments of the present invention are portable and are capable of operating with a much higher efficiency and at a substantially reduced cost of construction.